


Behind Closed Doors: "Relish" (Ben's POV)

by stillscape



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-04 21:16:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4153224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillscape/pseuds/stillscape
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written between seasons 4 and 5 for a Leslie_Ben LJ community challenge. This is their relationship from Ben's POV between the episodes "Campaign Ad" and "Live Ammo."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Behind Closed Doors: "Relish" (Ben's POV)

"So we should establish some ground rules, probably?" Ben asked, although he did not, in fact, mean for it to be a question. 

"Ground rules?" 

"For keeping campaign work separate from our relationship." 

Leslie lifted her head off his pillow by half an inch, looked at him, and scrunched up her nose. "Why would we want to keep those things separate?" 

"Because…" He took a deep breath. "Because this is going to be stressful enough as it is, Leslie. I don't want to—"

"I think it's going to be less stressful this way." 

He could see how she might think that _now_ , considering that he'd just spent a good twenty minutes working the campaign relaunch kinks out of her neck, and another twenty minutes working the post-ice-slipping soreness out of her hamstrings, but…

"But we're probably going to disagree on strategy at least some of the time," he pointed out. "There are going to be conflicts. There are going to be times when what I want to do as your boyfriend will directly contradict what I want to do as your campaign manager, and we both need to be okay with that." 

"But part of the reason I hired you is because I already know we work well together." Leslie pushed herself off her stomach, wrapped a bare arm around his waist, and drove him down onto the mattress. "I trust your judgment. And you're good at pretty much everything. And you know how to win an election." 

Disagreeing with Leslie was very difficult when she was mostly naked, and entirely cuddly, but he tried anyway. "I ran _one_ successful campaign. It was a long time ago. It was a very different set of circumstances. And it was kind of a fluke that I won." 

She snuggled in closer. "You're still the best campaign manager in Pawnee."

Disagreeing with Leslie was _really_ hard when she started unbuttoning his pants. 

"You know the press is going to have a field day with this, right?" he muttered, just before she tugged his jeans off. 

Leslie grinned. "So let's give them something to talk about." 

Ground rules could wait for a little bit longer. Not forever, of course. But they could wait until a late-night takeout waffle dinner-slash-initial campaign strategy planning meeting at Leslie's house. 

Eventually, she agreed that keeping business and pleasure as separate as possible would be smart. It would be politically savvy, for one thing. Voters needed to know that Leslie—and Ben too, but mostly Leslie—was capable of objective and independent reasoning. 

"The last thing we want," Ben said, halfway through his first pass at separating Leslie's position papers into _Relevant to City Council Election/Not Relevant to City Council Election_ , "is for voters to think that you're doing anything because your boyfriend told you to. And if we're, you know, _amorous_ in public—"

Leslie glanced up from behind another giant pile of binders, and cackled. " _Amorous_?" She quickly bit her lip. "No. You're right. We don't want that." 

"So no relationship stuff during business hours." 

"Well, we could a little bit," she said. "Hatch Act, you know. So if we're at City Hall—"

"Leslie." It was adorable that she seemed to want to display her affection so publicly, but… "Even if we're at City Hall, and you're not actively campaigning, it'll still be _my_ full-time job." 

"We used to make out in City Hall all the time," she said. "When we could've gotten into trouble with our bosses. And now I'm your boss. What are you going to do if I order you to make out with me?" 

"And that was a job I could do well when I was distracted. This job isn't. If I'm going to do this, we have to keep work and pleasure separate." 

Leslie stared into space for a moment. He could practically read her thoughts right now—or if he had to guess what they were, he would have guessed that half of her mind agreed with him, and the other half was about to argue that if you loved your job, which she did (and she was sure he'd love his new job too), then work and pleasure were practically identical, so why bother trying to keep them apart?

But then she turned to him, exhaled, and squared her shoulders. "Okay, you're right. No making out at City Hall during business hours." 

"No making out _anywhere_ during business hours." 

"That's a long time to go without making out," she said. "What about during lunch?" 

He sighed, but—yeah, okay, he could still feel a smile playing at one corner of his mouth. "During lunch is probably okay." 

"And what are business hours, anyway?" she asked. "Because I'm going to be working on the campaign either before eight or after six, you know? What if it's just us working on stuff at my house, or at your house? Is our relationship still off limits then?" 

Yeah, good point. "I don't know. We'll have to figure it out when it happens." 

"Alone, late at night…" Leslie trailed off. 

Ben had always been very, very good at keeping work and pleasure separate. He had the definite feeling, though, that it wouldn't be so easy this time.

After all, he'd never been in love with his boss before. 

***

"Is that a bruise?" Leslie squeezed his arm, just above the elbow, without waiting for an answer. 

"Ouch!" It was definitely a bruise.

"I'm sorry I tackled you," she said, for probably the fifth time that night. 

"It's okay." 

"It's not really okay. I hurt you."

Okay, so his physique was far from Khal Drogo's, but… "How weak do you think I am, Leslie?"

"Not physically. I meant…" She sighed, and lay back on the pillow, staring at the ceiling. She often did that when she was trying to clarify her thoughts late at night. It was hardly surprising, Ben thought, considering the ceiling was the only place in her house that wasn't cluttered. _A clean whiteboard for visualization_ , she had once called it. "I see what you mean about keeping work and relationship stuff separate." 

That wasn't what he'd expected her to say. "Huh?"

"If you were _just_ my campaign manager—if we weren't dating—then I wouldn't have tackled you. It wasn't professional. It wasn't what a responsible adult would do. And if I want to run for office, I have to be a responsible adult. If I win the election, I can't tackle the other council members when I disagree with them." 

"Well, that's true." _Responsible adult_. The words sounded vaguely familiar to Ben. Finally, he realized he'd said something very similar to Leslie himself, the first time they'd had a real conversation, all that time ago. 

"And," she continued, "now I feel like—I don't know, like I've let you down personally, too. We spent all day having that stupid argument, and we can't resolve it now, because I know you're right. But I also know that I'd rather come off as naïve than mean. I don't want to run a negative ad." She sighed again, and rolled onto her side, facing him. "And I know that makes me a bad politician. But it just feels like bullying, you know? And I hate bullying." On the last word, she rolled onto her back again. 

He joined her in staring at the ceiling.

Leslie couldn't possibly be a bad politician. She wasn't great at the game part of politics, not now and maybe not ever, but if the point of representative democracy was to elect public officials who actually kept the public's best interests in mind, and fought for those interests…

Well, there was no one in the world better suited for that job than Leslie Knope. 

This was unusual, being in Leslie's bed without touching her in some way. She'd pulled her hands away from him, even. They were folded across her chest. There was something peculiarly innocent about that pose…

_Responsible adult_. If Leslie had been planning a run for office since she was ten, she had undoubtedly been more responsible at that age than Bobby Newport was now…

"Leslie," he asked, slowly, "do you still _have_ the campaign ads you made when you were ten years old?" 

She shot up. "Of course I do." 

They were right under the bed, in a box, mixed in with a bunch of old paperback novels and Trapper Keepers filled with State of the Union addresses. 

When they called to ask how to digitize a VHS tape, April whined, "I like sleeping," but she came over and figured out how to do it anyway.

And Leslie knew how to use iMovie. 

***

Through the bathroom door that wasn't quite shut, he could hear Leslie's electric toothbrush shut off. 

"I still want to kiss your face really hard," she called, though the words were muffled by what he assumed was dental floss. 

"You shouldn't." Even if they'd had a very thorough version of this discussion already, at JJ's, the knot in Ben's stomach hadn't dissipated yet. It hurt much worse than his hand hurt, in fact. 

Leslie's head poked out of the bathroom. "I shouldn't do it, or I shouldn't want to?" 

"I don't know. Both." He rolled over, shut the light off, and forced his eyes shut. 

The initial scandal had been bad enough. Leslie losing her campaign managers, incomprehensible though they were, had been worse. Sure, the campaign had picked up momentum since he'd taken over, but if he was going to ruin that by punching some asshole—in front of a _photographer from the newspaper_ —

He'd left his job, left _another_ job, turned down a perfectly _good_ job, and…tried not to think about those few weeks before Leslie had insisted that he not only _should_ do this, or try to do it anyway, but that she believed he _could_ do it. 

Maybe he should have followed his initial instinct, and refused to run this campaign. Maybe they should have spent the night in different houses. Clearly, if he was punching people for insulting his girlfriend, he was having a hard time separating his work from his personal feelings…

A small, warm hand pressed softly into his back, interrupting his spiral. 

"It's going to be okay," she said. "It really is. We both did stupid stuff today. But we're going to have a press conference tomorrow, and I'm going to apologize for both of us, and then we're going to move on. Who knows? This might not even hurt the campaign."

"It's not going to help." 

"You don't know that. It might. We'll have another focus group." 

At that, Ben rolled over. Leslie's curtains were deliberately thin—she liked being woken up by the sun, on the rare occasions she slept that late—and he could see her faintly silhouetted against the window, lit by the usual, surprisingly flattering combination of streetlight glow and Sweetums pollution. 

"Are you sure you want to do another one right away?" 

She nodded. "I won't let things get so personal. Promise. I will take all weird statements from citizens with a grain of salgar, and evaluate them appropriately." 

"Well, I promise not to punch anyone else." 

"And I _also_ promise," Leslie said, "that I'm going to make you feel really good. Right now." 

She sat up, and scooted closer to him. This time he felt two small, warm hands pressing into his back, under his t-shirt. 

Leslie was very, very good at giving massages…sometimes. Sometimes she got a little too enthusiastic. Her fingers were surprisingly strong. Leslie's massages could be a little painful, sometimes. And sometimes she got a little carried away with touching, in general, and her back rubs turned…more erotic. (He never minded that very much.) But tonight was one of the normal nights, one of the very, very good massage nights. 

It was weird, Ben thought, how a back rub could dissipate a knot in his stomach. 

Well, not the back rub itself. _Leslie_. Leslie was doing that. 

And then suddenly he needed to touch her too, and put his hands under her t-shirt, and—and make out with her a lot. So he did. 

She smiled into his kisses and tore, absolutely tore, into his pants.

***

Leslie was a little bit tipsy when they finally got home from Chief Trumple's retirement party. Just a little. Which was good, in a way, because the night had been so very strange, and so very stressful, and…and Dave had been very strange. Not in a threatening way—well, aside from the gun and the handcuffs—but Leslie—Leslie had been into that? 

"I liked Dave a lot," she'd explained months ago, when the subject of previous romantic entanglements had first come up, "but I was never _in_ love with him, if that makes sense. If he hadn't moved, maybe I would have been eventually, but he moved." 

And now he'd seen Dave, and Dave was enormous and bald and had very odd ideas about how sentences were constructed. Dave was also an unquestionably nice guy, or had been until the handcuffs, and Ben had wondered, while he was attached to the men's room pipe, if Leslie could possibly have dated someone more different than himself. 

(She could have. She had done. He knew that—she'd told him about the Civil War re-enactor, too. But being confronted with the evidence of Dave, well…well, it really didn't matter, did it? He'd been attracted to tall brunettes before, after all, and to curvier women, and that certainly hadn't kept him from loving every inch of Leslie's tiny frame.) 

The tipsiness hadn't hit her until they'd left the bar. Thank goodness for that small miracle, that the entire Pawnee police force hadn't seen Leslie swaying gently in the parking lot. 

"My place or yours?" he'd asked, when they left. It was his new favorite question, because that _was_ the question now—not _whether_ they were going to spend the night together, but _where_ ; that he could take it for granted that he would get to fall asleep touching her. And he'd get to wake up to her…which was less exciting than it should have been, because when he woke up to Leslie it was inevitably in the middle of the night, either because she was sleep-campaigning or sleep-groping him. (The latter was preferable.) 

He had never once managed to wake up to Leslie still asleep beside him in the morning. She was always up and dressed before his alarm went off, always. But maybe if they continued to spend every night together…

In any case, they'd decided on her house tonight, because _his_ house was full of campaign stuff. They'd been staying there more frequently, because it was more efficient that way, but tonight—well, a distraction from the campaign seemed in order. 

A distraction from _everything_ seemed in order, really. Why _was_ he terrified of cops? Did he need therapy?

"I don't think you need therapy," Leslie had said. "I mean, unless you think it'll help."

Ben hadn't been aware that he'd spoken out loud, and spent the rest of the drive back to Leslie's biting his tongue. 

All he really wanted to do now was have a drink himself, or maybe several drinks, and crash on the couch with _Game of Thrones_ reruns. Leslie hadn't seen it on the first go-round, and he'd been dying to catch her up on the first season, but they hadn't managed to start yet. ( _How_ had she not seen it yet? And if she hadn't seen it—he kept trying not to think about this, because he didn't want to remember the months they hadn't been together—if she hadn't seen it, exactly where had the threat to wave his decapitated head on a stick come from?) The Kingsguard—now _there_ was some genuinely scary law enforcement. They _had_ to start soon, he reasoned; there was only so much time they had for TV, but there was also only so much longer he could go without showing her exactly why calling her "Khaleesi" was so perfect…

However, Leslie had declared that she "didn't feel like" watching television. Instead, she was going through the boxes under her bed while he stayed in the living room, nursing a gin and tonic, waiting for ESPN to show the Pacers highlights. 

"You know what we haven't done in a long time?" she yelled from upstairs. 

He muted the television. "What?" 

"Role play."

He heard soft footsteps on the stairs, and then Leslie appeared in the living room, dressed entirely in black, with a black fedora over her curls. The hat was ridiculous, but it was somehow also incredibly sexy on her…

"What are you wearing?"

"My sneaking-around clothes," she said, with a broad grin. "I'm going to sneak around the house, like a criminal, and then you'll be the sexy cop who has to catch me." She tossed him an equally ridiculous hat, which he did not put on. "I didn't think you'd like it if I was the sexy cop. Although—" she raised an eyebrow, which disappeared under the hat—"I do think I'd make a pretty sexy cop. Hey, do you want my handcuffs?"

He flinched. "You have handcuffs?"

"Just these," she said, holding up a pair. They were purple, and sparkly, and trimmed with fur. "Bachelorette party souvenir," she explained. 

"No," Ben said. His wrist felt like it was burning again. "I don't want handcuffs." 

Leslie shrugged, and tossed the handcuffs aside. "Suit yourself. You'll just have to work harder to seduce me. I mean, ensnare. Trap. Whatever." And she disappeared, yelling "Count to a hundred and then start looking!" as she ran down the hallway.

Leslie would make the sexiest, worst cop in the world. 

She would also make the world's worst cat burglar. Ben caught her before he'd even counted all the way to a hundred, in fact, because she'd counted to a hundred more quickly than he had, and then she'd issued an all points bulletin, which amounted to her yelling loudly about a "terribly dangerous sexy criminal on the loose" from the guest bedroom. 

"Oh, crap," she said, breaking character as soon as he opened the door. "That was fast." 

He chuckled. "You know I can follow the sound of your voice, right?" 

"I know." She composed herself, and smiled slyly under the hat. "Maybe I wanted to be caught by a sexy cop." 

"Leslie." He wrapped his arms around her. "No cop stuff. Please." 

She tilted the brim of the hat up. "Okay, fine. Maybe I just wanted to be caught." 

Her eyes were incredibly blue tonight. Maybe it was the hat. 

"I love you." 

"I love you too." And her hands found his belt almost immediately. 

Ben soon discovered that the hat impeded kissing. So he knocked it off, ran his fingers into her hair, and marveled, for the millionth time, at the reality of Leslie Knope—that she refused to air a negative ad which hadn't even been exaggerated, but had defended his bowling alley punch to the press; that no one could possibly be more thoughtful and caring than her, yet she'd been dumped so often and so badly it was almost comical; that—he tried not to think about Dave just then. 

She was a very strange reality, to be sure. But she was the best possible reality. 

"Here," Leslie breathed. "I don't want to go upstairs." She threw back the covers on the guest bed and tore her clothes off. 

He'd seen her naked plenty of times before, of course, but something about the way she looked _right now_ …well, he needed a minute. 

She gave an impatient wiggle. 

And that was another strange thing about Leslie, he thought—not for the first time—as he stripped his own clothes off. She could work fifty hours a week at her job and fifty hours a week on her campaign, and she could volunteer and find time to spend with Ann and her mother, and yet she had never once been too tired for sex. 

Though tonight, she was a bit more subdued than usual—not lacking in enthusiasm by any means, but for once, she let him take charge without arguing about it. 

Leslie loved cuddling in the aftermath. She was a cheery, talkative, _active_ cuddler. Tonight she slid out of bed to clean up first, as she always did, and he followed her lead, retreating to the other bathroom. When he entered her bedroom a few minutes later, it was empty.

He found Leslie in the guest bed, where she'd fallen asleep without even bothering to put clothes on or pull up the covers. 

He joined her in bed, and tucked the blankets over both of them, leaving just her shoulders exposed. Usually Leslie responded to back rubs, even in her sleep, but tonight when he tried, she remained completely still. 

So no cuddling. Ben fell asleep too, and woke up at dawn to find Leslie still immobile, snoring gently. 

Somehow, her snoring was cute. 

And even though he couldn't think of many things he would have liked to do more than watch this lovely woman sleep naked through a bright pink Sweetums sunrise, he forced himself out of bed and put on a pot of coffee. 

One thing he wanted to watch more than Leslie sleeping: Leslie giving an acceptance speech.

He had to work harder. 

***

They started spending more nights at his house, so that they could work right up until bedtime every night. It was a good strategy. 

Sometimes they worked _past_ bedtime. They had to. Even with Leslie's reduced Parks workload, there was always something else to do, another phone call to make, another small task to accomplish. 

"I need sex soon," Leslie complained one Friday night, while they were taking advantage of the solitude provided by a Mouse Rat gig in Patterson by preparing for the following week's senior center presentation. "We haven't had sex in, like, four days."

He looked up from the projected Ramp Up Pawnee expenditures. "We haven't?" 

"No. Doesn't that bother you?" 

"Of course it does," he said, although it didn't, really. Four days wasn't a terribly long dry spell, and they hadn't had time to have sex. Hadn't made time? He wasn't sure. There would be plenty of time for sex after the election. That was a shockingly erotic thought in itself, he suddenly realized—that he had lost all doubts about whether or not they would be together after—wait, had he ever had those doubts?

No, Ben realized a few moments later, after he'd temporarily given up concentrating on the spreadsheets. Sure, there were some superficial issues—he still hadn't _quite_ gotten over the sheer size of Dave, for instance—if that even mattered. 

It probably didn't matter. Leslie clearly enjoyed having her way with him, even if he was pretty sure she'd made reference to "my brilliant, gazelle-like campaign manager" in her sleep the other night.

But there was absolutely no crucial part about this relationship that he doubted, not since they'd gotten back together. And knowing that, possessing that knowledge so deeply that it had completely permeated his consciousness—well, it was definitely was better than sex. 

He put all thoughts of sex away, for the time being, and went back to Excel. 

Moments later, he found himself sneaking a glance across the kitchen table. 

Leslie was hunched over a printed copy of her presentation, mouthing the lines silently, occasionally picking at a horrifying cookie bar concoction that the Goddesses had invented themselves during their last meeting—shortbread and Rice Krispies and peanut butter and the Sweetums equivalent of M&Ms and a marshmallow layer. (Leslie had almost cried when they'd presented her with the cookie tin.) 

She had also changed out of her suit at some point—he hadn't noticed when, exactly, but now she was wearing pajama bottoms and one of his own t-shirts. Her hair was in a ponytail, and she had taken off her makeup, and—how had he failed to notice this?—she wasn't wearing a bra. 

He forced himself to look back at the spreadsheets, and to ignore what was happening in his pants. But his resolve not to look at Leslie lasted only for—good lord, had it really only been ninety seconds since he'd last looked at her? 

"Leslie, we have a problem." 

"Crap." She looked up. "What? Is there an error in those calculations I changed earlier?" 

"No, that's all fine." He cleared his throat a little. "The problem is that we've been so busy with Ramp Up Pawnee, we haven't had sex in four days." 

"Oh." Leslie cleared her throat too, and smiled, and slid out of her chair. "That _is_ a problem. But—" She slid the table backwards a few inches, and climbed in his lap—"I'm really good at problem solving." 

The flimsy kitchen chair wobbled dangerously. 

"Are you." 

She nodded. "Very." 

They could have gone to the bedroom—it was right there—but suddenly they were making out, furiously, Leslie bearing down on him with the full force of her enthusiasm, him with one hand around her breast. His other hand suddenly had to grab the kitchen railing to keep the chair from tipping over backwards. 

"Whoops," she said. 

"Should we move?" Ben asked, although he doubted very seriously he'd be able to walk right now. 

"Not yet." She peeled off her t-shirt and flung it, wildly, into nowhere. "Not until after we've solved our problem." 

Distracted as he was just then, with Leslie's bare breasts demanding all his attention, the fact that Leslie intended to have sex at the kitchen table took a few minutes to sink in. Really, he didn't make the connection until she tried to slide her hands into his khakis, and couldn't. 

"Pants off," she ordered, climbing out of his lap. 

"In the _kitchen_?" He stood up anyway, and removed his pants anyway, and was summarily shoved back into the wobbly chair, which Leslie had repositioned slightly, so that it rested against the railing. 

"No," she said, with a shake of her ponytail. "In _campaign headquarters_ , where I'm just about to start my presentation. Now—" Her pajamas were somewhere, he wasn't sure where they were—oh, there they were, on the railing. "I'm not a professional mountain climber, but I think I can make this work." 

Somehow, by the end of her sentence, she had slid herself completely onto him. 

"Good lord," he breathed, grabbing her hips for emotional support. And to keep her in place. This seemed…risky and precarious…and he did _not_ want her to move. 

Ever. He never wanted her to move, ever. It was all he could do to process her weight in his lap and her breasts in his face and her, all of her, around him. 

She couldn't move very much, not in this position, and he tried to help, to use his finger, but the angle was off, and he succeeded only in making the chair wobble again. 

"Steady there," Leslie murmured. 

"Are you—" 

"Oh, I feel great," she said. "Don't worry about me. I got this." 

It was a _fantastic_ position in which to make out, and they did, for what seemed like forever. 

"Are you sure you're—" There was just no way to, well, _stimulate_ her from here, and there had hardly been any foreplay, and—

"Quiet, Mr. Campaign Manager," she said, pressing a finger to his lips. "I'm solving this problem. This problem where we have too much campaign work and not enough time for sex." 

"We're _having_ sex." 

"And I'm doing campaign work." Leslie grinned. "The way I see it, if I can deliver my presentation from here, well…" 

"Wait. Deliver your—from where?"

It shouldn't have been sexy. Nothing about a presentation on wheelchair ramps for senior citizens should have been sexy. 

But when she leaned over and hissed " _Stairs are a young man's game_ " into his ear, he lost it completely. 

Leslie detached herself—rather gracefully, all things considered—and bit her lip.

"We have another problem to solve," she announced. 

"Good lord." He tried to collect his thoughts. "Give me a minute, okay?" 

Instead, she popped onto the kitchen table and lay back, accidentally knocking a stack of documents to the floor. "No, now," she said. "I need now." 

The table wasn't the ideal height, but he was flexible enough to get his tongue in the right places, and Leslie—good lord, Leslie really did need _now_. 

"Second round in bed, though?" he asked, after the table nearly collapsed under the force of her orgasm. 

"Second round in bed," she agreed. "But that was fun." 

"It was fun."

"And it was unbelievably hot, didn't you think? I've always wanted to do it in somebody's campaign headquarters." 

"I—" What could he say? There was nothing hotter, nothing, than fulfilling one of her sexual fantasies, even if that included a speech directed at the elderly. Was that what this had been? "Yes. It was." 

She slid off the table, which caused half a ream of paper to hit the floor, and pulled her pajama bottoms back on. 

"My bedroom's not campaign headquarters?"

"No, your bedroom's your bedroom."

Later in the night, or maybe early in the morning, Ben woke up in his bedroom, with Leslie on top of and around him again. 

"Hi," he said. 

"Hi. Is this a good way to wake up?" 

He could only nod. 

"You've gotta tell me more of your fantasies," she said. "Otherwise I'm just going to have to guess, like with this one." 

Her guess was pretty good. Good enough that Ben spent the rest of the morning feeling giddy. Gloriously, dangerously giddy. 

Even April wondering, loudly and with a disgusted glare, what Leslie's t-shirt was doing on the stovetop wasn't enough to kill his mood. 

Leslie kept catching his eye, and grinning. After the third or fourth time April called them "gross" during the morning strategy meeting, she leaned in and whispered in his ear.

"And you wanted to keep work and pleasure separate." Her hand slid into his lap. "Still feel that way?" 

He didn't have to think about it. "Nope." 

***

And then, Jennifer Barkley appeared.

Remnants of the dangerously giddy feeling lasted, improbably, after her arrival. The remnants ebbed and flowed, throughout the next few days, of course, but every time Ben looked up and saw Leslie's hair, or her smile, and every time they made eye contact, well…

Jennifer was intimidating as all hell, in every sense of the word, and he thought it might be prudent to be even more afraid of her—but still, the giddy feeling didn't dissipate completely until she casually admitted she'd been lying about the factory, and swept out of the bar. 

Leslie, following her three-course dessert sugar rush, fell asleep promptly that night. But Ben couldn't sleep, and just after two that morning, he folded himself into the window seat with his iPad, determined to research Jennifer Barkley's career as thoroughly as possible. 

Good lord. They were even more screwed than he'd initially thought. 

At precisely 3:48, he ran to the bathroom—but managed, thank goodness, _not_ to throw up. 

At precisely 3:53, he leaned against the doorframe of his bedroom, watching his beautiful girlfriend sleep. 

"Yes, Perd, I do believe it's possible to give every citizen free cake on his or her birthday _and_ to fight the obesity epidemic," she murmured. "The beautiful and talented director of public relations for the health department, Ann Perkins…" 

Ben slid back into bed, and before he could even rearrange the pillow, Leslie was snuggled up against his chest, still sleeping soundly. 

"I love you and I like you," she slurred. 

She might have been talking to Ann, but he found her hand anyway, and squeezed it. "I love you and I like you." 

He had to work harder. 

***

Frustrating as the whole ordeal had been, in the end, he didn't even want an explanation as to why Leslie had suddenly decided drinking was more important than work. Screw it. An opportunity had been wasted, but no real damage had been done, except to his increasingly frazzled nerves and his increasingly fragile sleeping pattern. 

And maybe that wasn't such a terrible discovery, he thought, on the excruciatingly slow drive back to Pawnee. Being able to trust, as Leslie always had, that not every misstep was going to end in outright disaster, that screwing up every so often wasn't a cause for ruin—that wasn't such a bad thing at all, really. 

He hoped it wasn't just the champagne talking. 

He hoped Ann and Tom weren't _really_ dating.

He hoped Leslie would continue to love him, even if he got grumpy and stayed that way for a while. 

"So, yesterday sucked," she murmured, once Ann and Tom had finally gone home. "And I think I used up most of my luck for the rest of the campaign. Except…" A small, warm hand danced across his chest. 

"Except?"

"You. I was thinking, on the drive back—well, all the time, really, but especially this morning—I love you so much." 

"I love you too." 

"And if I win this election, it'll be because of you."

"That's not true," he said, automatically, because it _wasn't_.

"Not entirely," Leslie agreed. "But you know I couldn't have done this without you, right?" 

"Yes, you could have." 

She groaned. "You're _still_ terrible at taking credit. Whatever. Not the point. The point is, I'm really lucky to have you, and I don't think I tell you that enough. Also, I love you and I like you and this—running for office—is the most fun I've ever had in my life, and I want you to be having fun too, okay?" 

He couldn't stay frustrated with her. Not for long. "Leslie…"

"So," she continued, giving him a little dig in the ribs, "today, I'm going to _make_ you have fun. Today, you are _very_ lucky to have me." 

Not just today, he thought. Always. But sometimes—often, even—kissing Leslie was the most appropriate response. 

She popped up from the chair, grabbed his hand, and dragged him down the hall, chattering all the way. "You're temporarily relieved of campaign management duty. So, sex first, and then I guess we should probably eat, and then we're going to lock ourselves in your bedroom with some kettle corn and maybe a bottle of wine, and we're going to marathon the first season of _Game of Thrones_ already. I'm tired of not knowing why you want to call me Khaleesi. "

Leslie got the hair part right away, and the sexual empowerment part soon after, but declared the end of the season very weird indeed, seeing as there was no Pawnee equivalent to hatching dragon eggs. It took a few spoilers from the third novel to fully explain why Daenarys Targaryen resonated so strongly—because she wanted what was best for her people, always. Because she was a hard-headed, stubborn, occasionally naïve politician who refused to compromise when her city's welfare was at stake. And—and yes, because she had platinum blonde hair and a killer body and really enjoyed sex. 

"Arya's pretty kickass too," she muttered drowsily, at the end of the marathon. 

"Yeah, she is." 

He couldn't wait to introduce her to Brienne, when the election was over and they'd have all the time in the world. 

God, he was lucky that Leslie liked his nerdy side. 

***

He woke up to find the other side of the bed empty, and a note on the pillow. _Had to run an errand. I love you and I like you, and I'm standing by my official statement that I'm super into you. Politics is hot, especially when it makes you all confident, so you're just going to have to deal with it. Let's practice debating later, okay?_

Ben rolled onto his back, and stared at the ceiling, mentally mapping out a few trains of thought on the big blank whiteboard. 

He had no problem believing, none at all, that running for office was the most fun Leslie had ever had in her life. 

And when he really thought about what was _going on_ , in the middle of the day and in front of whoever happened to be around at the time—when he really thought about that, plus her proclivity for political role play…

(Joe Biden. She had a framed picture of Joe Biden in her house.)

And she'd flat-out said that having sex in the middle of campaign headquarters had been one of her fantasies. 

It seemed not only possible, but increasingly _likely_ , that this—the election, his role in it, whatever—that it was pushing every single one of Leslie's buttons. 

Confidence, eh? 

Yeah, he could do that. Apparently he _had_ been doing that. 

He wished she hadn't run an errand this morning. He was very _confident_ , at the moment, that the budget crisis could wait for half an hour or so. Forty-five minutes, tops. 

But she wasn't there. It was as good a time to start his day as any. Reading the paper was easier without Leslie around, anyway, since she always stole everything _but_ the comics.

He grabbed the paper, shuffled into the kitchen, and found a large rabbit on the stove. 

Well, at least he'd never be bored again. 

"Leslie?" 

***


End file.
